Nawazuddin Siddiqui says while he studied theatre, the thought of becoming a ‘successful actor’ or ‘star’ never crossed his mind.

Bollywood’s dynamite Nawazuddin Siddiqui says while he studied theatre, the thought of becoming a ‘successful actor’ or ‘star’ never crossed his mind. What he wanted to do was explore as many characters as possible. Now he hopes to internalize characters as much as he can.

The acclaimed actor spoke about this in Saavn's podcast "Take 2 with Anupama and Rajeev" when he said: "We used to read books when we were in NSD (National School of Drama) and our teacher also told us that we have many characters inside every human. What is important is how we discover them and bring them out in our acting...

"The teacher said, 'There are thousand characters inside a human'. This thing got stuck in my head. I tried to find it out. So I thought that whenever I will act, I will discover it inside me. So these thoughts came to my head and I never thought that I wanted to become a successful actor or a star.

"This thought never came in my mind that I will do films one day while I was in theatre. The only thought that came in my mind while doing theatre was that I have to explore as much as I can and bring it all out."

Is his character of Ganesh Gaitonde from "Sacred Games" also within him? "Of course, it is somewhere hidden inside us. I was given the character of Gaitonde, but I am the one who is playing it. So I have to see where is Gaitonde inside me and I have to bring him out in my acting."

The way forward for Nawazuddin is to try to internalize the characters as far as possible. "I am adamant to remove pollution from acting and purely internalize character as much as I can," he added.

When was the last time he was star struck? "I got star struck after watching Rajinikanth sir. Seeing his simplicity shocked me. I was like, 'How can he be so simple?' He is a superstar but he makes you realize he is a normal man like you and makes you feel, 'I am not any alien and not any star'.

"But there are actors who are nothing and carry such attitude. Every person in each and every village of North knows Rajinikanth but no one knows about our superstars in the South. Our attitude is just arrogant... We carry 25 people with us."